The Most Dangerous Mind Manual
by LucklessOne
Summary: After learning of Bill's true nature, Stanford needed help. His Emotions felt just as desperate. A short fic about what was going through Ford's head before he sent that postcard to Stan.


**Written for the r/Fanfiction Crossover Challenge proposed by u/kilogram666. Fandoms chosen by u/King_of_the_Kobolds. Also, shout out to the r/Fanfiction Discord, they're great.**

**Enjoy!**

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There is a special mind manual at the back of all the others. Everyone has it. A list and explanation for all sorts of sickness the mind can have. It's not very useful— a good chunk of the advice is to panic. The general consensus is that it causes unneeded stress. Only the Fear part of the mind tends to even glance at them.

Whether that's for the best or not is hard to say. After all, Fear Emotions tend to barely make it past the first couple pages before freaking out.

If one were to have a curious mind, a mind that would pluck out this mind manual above all others and give it a good read, they might finally reach the end of the book to the most bone-chilling sickness of them all.

Dream demons.

There are many variations of dream demons, but that did not matter. They were all scribbled out. In its place are pages upon pages filled with nothing but a triangle with an eye in the middle. Scrambled symbols lining every corner of the page. All burnt, etched into the book.

On a day fueled by lack of sleep, fueled with nothing but the primal intrinsic desire to rid the body of pain, the Fear emotion of Stanford Pine's mind has found this mind manual. He knew this symbol, it was such a common hallucination he could draw this symbol in his sleep. Not that he'd ever risk to draw or sleep. With a sort of half-crazed laughter, Stanford's Fear raised the book high in the air.

"Joy," he croaked, his bundle of nerves shaking from his own bundle of nerves. "Joy, come back, I'm going to burn this. We can go to sleep, Joy."

Anger provided the flames. The intensity of the fire would singe Fear's fingers, but at this point Fear was so out of it he didn't have the strength to over analyze the injury. The mind manual would crumple, withering under the heat of the flames. Yet a few moments later, without fail, the book would restore on its own. The final pages, the pages with the triangles and symbols etched in red, would merely grow darker. Bleed into the rest of the pages.

A mind manual cannot be destroyed. Everyone knows this.

Joy would laugh, an empty and desperate sound. Nobody could sleep. Time marches forward.

For a long time, that day was simply one same day out of many.

Disgust would only stare from afar, disgusted by his own peers in the mind but unable to fault them.

"We are getting worse," Disgust would whisper, whenever even a fraction of a non-covered reflective surface would show Stanford. "We look as freakish as someone with six fingers would be."

Yet Disgust hasn't touched the control panel in months. Only Fear dared to approach the console nowadays.

As for Sadness. Well. During this time, nobody had seen Sadness for ages. Not surprising, since the other emotions haven't particularly enjoyed Sadness' company for the past ten years.

At the height of franticness, when the days seem to bleed and Ford's right eye seem to bleed just as much, Sadness reappeared from wherever he was hiding from. He walked into the main area of the Headquarters. In his arms, he clutched a memory. A memory swirling with a yellow and blue hue.

"Everyone," Sadness announced to the rest of the emotions. His voice was low, but with how quiet and echoing the Headquarters had become, everyone heard. "We cannot let this go on any longer."

"You think we don't know this?" growled Anger, quick to let his frustrations show. "Everyone has been trying to find a way out of this mess! And where have YOU been?!"

Sadness flinched, clutching the memory tighter to his chest, picking at his own six-finger hands out of nervous habit.

"Anger…" To all of the Emotion's surprise, it was Joy who said that. Joy gave a grim smile. "Let him speak."

Thus, all attention was on Sadness. To his credit, Sadness didn't falter on attention he hadn't received in so long. The Emotion merely unwrapped his arms around the memory, raising it up slightly to let the whole room see the yellow and blue orb.

It was a memory of Stan. Stanford and Stanley, barely breaking through puberty, sharing laughs as they worked together to restore the Stan o' War.

_"If there's anyone in the world I could trust," past-Ford had said, as the sun burnt the skin off their back and the ice in their beverages were slowly melting away, "It would be you, Stan, with a 99.9% probability."_

That memory, when it first came, was coloured in a pure yellow hue.

"No," hissed Anger immediately.

Sadness, insistent, nudged the memory closer to Anger. Anger winced, backing away even further.

"That guy?" muttered Disgust, leaning on the control panel.

At his touch, the screen in front of the console flickered, showing off an image of how Stan would probably look now. Probably the same amount of slob as usual. A little dirtier, living by himself can't be all that good. Still riding in his El Diabo he called the Stanmobile… Goofy unapologetic grin… Wearing the same face—

Fear slammed a hand on the console, shutting down the daydream. His hands were shaking.

"What about that guy?" he asked, failing to sound collected.

"Not just any guy," corrected Sadness, eyes never straying from the memory. "Ford's brother."

"Dead to me," said Disgust.

"He ruined our life," said Anger.

"We miss him."

As he spoke, Sadness smiled, eyes unfocused and shiny from tears.

The smile startled Joy, seeing such a familiar emotion on such an unfamiliar Emotion. This dissonance resounded within him. He looked at all the other emotions, how haggard and simply tired everyone was. With resolve, Joy echoed the smile.

"At this point in our life, what do we have to lose?"

When it comes to leadership and the theoretical, all the emotions in Ford's mind would immediately turn towards Fear. So they did. Fear jumped a little at being thrusted into the spotlight.

"We could lose…" started Fear. He was ready to launch into a list. They could lose their grant money. They could lose all their research.

They could get betrayed all over again, sabotaged, and lose any trust Ford could ever have for anyone.

As that thought struck Fear, Fear himself hesitated. Sadness had no such hesitations, pushing the memory into Fear's arms.

"…or, we could win against Bill."

Fear stared at the memory of Ford and Stan, laughing their days away without a care in the world, dreaming of sailing around the world on a boat.

Everyone went silent, doing what Ford does best.

_Thinking. Strategizing._

Disgust shifted a little. "…It would be nice to one-up Bill."

"He would hate never having his chance for world domination, wouldn't he." Competitiveness flared into Anger.

"Ford would be happy, even if he doesn't want to admit it." The edge of Joy's smile softened a bit. "We all love Stanley."

Fear set the memory down on the floor. He walked over to the idea cabinet, pulling out a specific light bulb with shaky hands. Then, he shut his eyes to not see the shaking of his hands.

"There are so many things that can go wrong. We know Stanley. We know how he can screw up."

He opened his eyes again. His hands weren't shaking. They couldn't shake; all the other emotions had placed a hand on the light bulb as well, steadying it.

Joy grinned, long forgotten mischievous and adventurous spirit peeking through.

"But no matter how hard he screws up, he tries his best to fix things, doesn't he?"

"Stanley would do this for us," said Disgust. "This is such a big opportunity for him."

"Nobody else would be worthy to protect our research," added Anger.

The idea to see Stanley, to shake his hand again…

Fear nodded. "There is no one you could trust. But to Stanley… He is always there when it counts. That is one constant I _can_ trust."

Together, they walked forward. All the Emotions pushed the light bulb into its slot on the console.

Click.

The idea locked itself in almost embarrassingly quickly.

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Cherished but left alone on the floor, the memory of two brothers fixing a boat had turned completely yellow once again.

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**A/N:**

**I wrote this in a couple of hours total, and ahh I want to add more! _ But I also wanted to publish this before Nanowrimo starts. So I had to cut my losses. Perhaps another time, I will return to finish this, to delve into some other characters... But who knows when.**

**Still, I hope you guys like it!**


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